Along other lines, we’re taught that there are two overarching forms of interaction: attraction and repulsion or, in Kabbalistic terminology, Chessed (kindness) and Gevurah (judgment). There are very many points in between, of course, which are all brought about through the “middle pillar” that lies between these two extreme poles, but that will be explained at another point.
In any event, were told that “by its nature, Chessed is like a welcoming right arm” that reaches out to embrace. “So when it reigns” at any given point in the world, “created beings behave toward each another fraternally and smile at each other”, literally and figuratively. Contrarily, by its nature “Gevurah distains and rejects”, so when it reigns at any given point, “faces express anger, and everything is weighed down with sadness”, literally and figuratively, Ramchal says in his comments to Petach 52.
As such, as he expresses it in Petach 52 itself, because of its, i.e., judgment’s, makeup each light, i.e., each of the six Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, came to exist separately rather than together with the others. For by nature judgment doesn’t exhibit “brotherly love” but rather “sorrow” and “severity” so to speak, and is thus inclined toward encouraging separateness rather than unity.
The point of the matter is that separateness, distain, rejection and the like would have held sway over the world, but they didn’t, thanks to Imma as we’ll see.
(c) 2013 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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